


The Ultimate Sacrifice

by Rhaenyra



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Community: HPFT, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Marauders' Era, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 14:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9238553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhaenyra/pseuds/Rhaenyra
Summary: Two weeks ago, they saw her smiling and laughing.Now, they are in hiding and her family has made the ultimate sacrifice.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a challenge with the prompt of Lily reacting to Marlene McKinnon's death. Prompt by hpfanfictionprompts @ tumblr.

Lily loved the sound scissors made when they began to slide along wrapping paper, cutting it in a nice clean line.  There was something satisfying about wrapping a present by hand, folding down the edges and taping everything together when she was satisfied with how it looked.  She had always been in awe of how professional her mother could make presents look when she was a child, with beautifully tied ribbons and smooth paper.  As a little girl she had told herself that she would manage the same when she was a mum, but she was still waiting for that skill to manifest itself.  She could make gifts look like that with the help of magic, but she enjoyed doing in the Muggle way.

 

She hummed along with the song on the radio as she folded the striped blue and white paper around the box of farm animal toys, attaching it to the back with a tiny piece of Spellotape.  She needed to get it out today if it was going to get to Frank and Alice's house in time for Neville's birthday tomorrow.  It was a bit embarrassing really, since the Longbottom's gift for Harry had arrived with the morning post three days past.

 

The song she had been humming really was fitting, since her lateness had nothing to do with how busy she had been.  On the contrary, she hadn't left the house since the Order had gathered two weeks ago.  She really did have too much time on her hands.  Since they had started having Order members drop by with food and they had started using cloth nappies for Harry, she didn't even have the excuse that she needed to make a quick dash to the shops to buy something they were running out of.  She had days and days of free time on her hands, locked in this house and staying out of sight, and even little chores were being pushed off for later.  There was not going to be a shortage of downtime in the coming days, but it was easy to lack motivation.  Evidently, Frank and Alice were handling the downtime better than she and James were.  At the very least, one of them was still productive.

 

She was signing the card from all three of them ( _"To a very special boy on his first birthday.  Love from the Potters: Lily, James, and Harry"_ ) when she heard the sound of her husband coming down the stairs.  It was quieter than his usual gait, the sort of way he only walked when Harry was asleep, so she figured he must be bored.  Without his Invisibility Cloak, this had been happening more and more lately over the last few days.

 

"I'm almost done with Neville's gift, but I can do something with you in a minute," she promised, not bothering to look up from the envelope she was sealing with a tap of her wand.

 

"Lily..."

 

Her stomach sank.  She had heard James use that tone before, but it was never followed by anything good.  That was the tone he used when his parents were in St. Mungo's with dragon pox the year before, when news came that her friend's childhood home had had the Dark Mark over it, the tone he had used when she had told him that one of her oldest friends had been killed by Death Eaters.  That tone could only mean one thing.

 

One look at him told her that she was right.  He was pale, which made the dark circles around his eyes even more noticeable.  When they had been allowed to fight, to do something, they had felt like they were making a difference.  Since they'd been cooped up in Godric's Hollow, they'd had more time to dedicate to worry and countless hours in the middle of the night where they had worried together about the safety of their friends and families by choice.  All that worry showed on James and she didn't need a mirror to know it showed on her as well.  In his hand was a letter, which he was gripping so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.

 

"What happened?" she asked.  The other question, the one about who they had lost this time, didn't need to be said.

 

James sat down beside her at the kitchen table, near the scissors and scraps of paper she had pushed to the side.  He reached over to grab one of her hands in both of his before he said, "The letter was from Dumbledore.  It's about the McKinnons."

 

Lily's stomach clenched.  She had seen Marlene two weeks previously and she seemed like her usual self.  She'd had tales of success on her missions and intel provided by her husband, Ian, from the Ministry of Magic's Public Information Services, since he had not been able to attend that night.  She had also asked about Harry as a fellow mother, reminiscing about when her own children were that young and sharing her own struggles with parenthood.

 

Marlene and Ian weren't the only McKinnons who helped the Order, though.  Mrs. McKinnon was a member of the Wizengamont who sometimes was made privy to information people kept from Dumbledore, which was always appreciated.  Mr. McKinnon was an Obliviator with thirty-seven years of experience, one of the most talented on the job, so he was often sent on the most difficult jobs, the facts of which he would pass on to the Order.  They were one of the families that was most dedicated to the cause.  Ian's younger brother and sister weren't full-fledged members of the Order, but they both were vocal in their support of Muggleborns and in their stances against Death Eaters.  Any of them could be the McKinnons James was talking about.

 

She didn't want to ask, but Lily knew she had to.  "Who was attacked?"  She didn't want to say killed, couldn't bring herself to say it.  Until James said otherwise, there was still hope that they were simply injured and could recover.

 

James swallowed hard.  His thumb rubbed the back of her hand in what she knew was supposed to be reassuring, but was less so given the fact that his sweaty palms were against hers.  "Lily..." he began, but again he couldn't get anything else out.  He pressed his lips together before saying, "It's the worst I've seen."

 

"You're scaring me," she said.  His hazel eyes looked watery behind his glasses and James didn't cry, not often.  This was bad.  "Tell me.  Who?"

 

"All of them, Lils," he whispered.

 

She felt like she couldn't breathe.  "All of them?" she repeated, trying to wrap her mind around it.  "Like Ian and Marlene and the kids, or -"

 

"You remember what Marlene said the last time we saw her, about Colin proposing to his girlfriend?"

 

Lily nodded.  It had come up sometime before the meeting started, when people had started to gather but they were still waiting on others.  Frank and Alice Longbottom had shown them photos of Neville, who had just started walking and Benjy Fenwick had been talking about the Falcons versus Arrows game with Peter when she mentioned that her brother-in-law had just gotten engaged.  "What about it?"

 

"Well, it seems like they'd all gotten together at Mr. and Mrs. McKinnon's house to celebrate last night," James said.  He was trying to keep his voice steady, but it cracked at the end anyway.  "They were all there... Marlene and Ian, their kids, both his siblings, all of them.  Somehow Death Eaters must have known about it, because..."  He pushed his glasses up as he pinched the bridge of his nose near his eyes.  "They must have known because they sent enough people to manage to kill them all.  The house is a bit out of the way, but somebody came for a visit this morning and saw the Dark Mark and when Aurors got on scene they... they found the bodies of all of them on the main floor of the house."

 

"But... how could they overpower them.  They know - knew - how to fight.  Mr. McKinnon and Marlene have both been through so many duels, how could they... how could they all be killed?"  Surely James was wrong.  Voldemort would have needed to send too many people to take them all out.

 

"It looks like Marlene was trying to protect the kids when they got her," James said.  "She had her back to the door and was with both her kids.  Dumbledore thinks she was trying to get out with them to apparate for help."

 

Her mind jumped to Harry, napping upstairs.  She didn't doubt that the protective mama bear instinct would come out if somebody attacked when her baby was around.  She would fight, she _had_ fought, Death Eaters before but she couldn't do that if Harry was in danger.  Marlene's babies had not really been babies, they had been nine and six, but her instinct had surely been the same.

 

"Dumbledore thinks they probably managed to severely injure at least two of their attackers, since there was blood spatter in the dining room and in the formal living room, but they aren't exactly going to a magical hospital to get fixed up after Death Eater duties so he doesn't think we can figure out who was involved in the attack."

 

Lily rested her head in her hands.  "This can't be real," she muttered, more to herself than James.  They'd seen too many deaths already in this war, but the destruction of an entire family was different.  She knew Death Eaters weren't opposed to killing children, she had read about it and they had only gone into hiding for Harry's safety.  But this was an all-magic family.  They did not usual meet this kind of fate, that was reserved for people like her or people who had been dubbed blood traitors.

 

They sat in silence, still holding hands, as she tried to process it all.  Doing her best to ignore the stinging behind her eyes, she said, "We won't be able to go to the funerals, will we?"

 

James cursed.  "I hadn't even thought of that," he admitted.  "I was more focused on the fact that we won't be able to go out and fight for them.  We are losing this damn war and we can't even help, because we are stuck here.  We are useless now."

 

"I know it feels like that now," Lily said.  As much as she wanted to be rational about it, knowing that people she loved were putting their lives on the line while she was hiding made her sick.  "I would love to be out there, doing something to help."

 

"Knowing that they need us and there's nothing we can do..."  His hands were in his hair, pulling in frustration.

 

"They need people to help them fight, to give them intel, to strategize, but Harry needs _us_ ," Lily said.  He needed to hear it, but she needed to remind herself of it as well.  Knowing that people like her were dying because of who they were born as was terrible and she hadn't realized how much helping had meant to her until she had known that it had to stop.  "Other people can do things for the Order, to help win the fight.  None of them can be Harry's parents."

 

Other people loved Harry.  She didn't doubt that their friends, the only real family they had left, loved their baby almost as much as they did.  She trusted them implicitly with him when she needed to go somewhere, but he needed her and James most.  Harry's face never lit up more than when he first saw his daddy after a long nap and nobody else could nurse him before bed, calming him in a way that was hers alone.

 

James knew this, of course, but that didn't make it easier.  He sat back in his chair and stared down at the letter, scanning over it for what she was sure was at least the fifth time.  "Do you know what I thought the hardest part of being in hiding would be?" he asked after a few minutes.

 

It was so easy to want to jest with him, to joke that obviously the hardest thing would be his inability to stay still.  It would bring them back to their usual way of talking, but she didn't feel like it was the time yet.  Instead, she simply asked, "What?"

 

"I thought the hardest thing would be worrying about Harry.  Are we doing enough to protect him?  How do you raise a kid without any community support and minimal contact with friends?  Then there are all the worries that would come as he aged... we couldn't send him to swimming lessons or sign him up for toddler Quidditch or go on playdates with kids his age, except for maybe with Neville.  Every single day we would have to figure out how to best balance Harry's needs for a normal childhood with the target on his head.  I worried that we are going to screw him up so badly trying to keep him safe that he will grow to resent us.  But that's not the worst thing.  The worst thing is that we were doing things to try to make the world safe for him and we just stopped."

 

"Harry will understand."  He was only eleven months, but she felt like she knew him in the way that all mums seemed to know their children.  "There are lots of people who can help us explain it to him when the time comes, if he doesn't want to listen to us.  We will be useless at helping others if we can't even keep our own family safe."

 

"You're probably right," James conceded, "but what about the others?"  He must have noticed the quizzical look on her face, because he added, "The other members of the Order?"

 

"Dumbledore explained that we needed to step back because of things has been hearing," Lily said in what she hoped was a reassuring tone.  "People won't be disappointed in us.  They understand that Harry comes first."

 

"For us, yes.  But I don't believe for a second that Dumbledore isn't trying to find a way to make that prophecy false.  He wants to find a way to destroy Voldemort that doesn't involve relying on somebody who is still putting everything in his mouth and drooling from cutting baby teeth.  The rest of them are out looking for weak points, into his past, working on converting followers, and putting themselves in dangerous situations so we can win before our baby has to become involved in a war."  He wiped the two tears that had fallen as he'd said "our baby" with the palm of his hand rather aggressively.

 

"Everybody is doing this because they are good people who want to overcome this bigotry and violence.  Most of them were members of the Order before Harry was born.  But," she lowered her voice to little more than a murmur, trying to keep it steady, "if there is truth to it, everybody who is protecting us and fighting right now are putting their lives on the line for our son."

 

That was when the tears started to flow.  Marlene and Ian, their six-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter, Mr. and Mrs. McKinnon and all the rest would be added to an ever-growing list of people who had given their lives for the good of wizarding society.  Something she and James would still be doing had they not been surprised by news that she was carrying the little boy upstairs.

 

It was still on her mind that night as she cradled him in his nursery.  Through the walls she could hear the television on, which she had a feeling James was using to cover up the tears and curses that never failed in to come out in his anger.  She tried not to focus on that, instead taking in everything she could about Harry.

 

He seemed so big when he was stretched out in her arms now, wearing the pyjamas patterned with black dogs that his godfather had bought in four different sizes.  Harry's chubby little hand with dimpled knuckles was by his mouth, where the little pink lips that were shaped just like his father's were still open.  They looked more and more alike every day, the two people she loved most in the world.  She feared a bit that they would grow to act more alike as Harry aged, having been there to witness James's teenage years for herself and having seen Harry's wide-eyed glee when James let his snitch loose in a locked room.  Even so, she knew she would be thrilled the day James first taught Harry Quidditch or the day they brought him to catch the Hogwarts Express for the first time.  There was nothing like your parents' mortality and the deaths of your friends to make you realize that nothing in life was guaranteed.

 

She knew that he could sleep in his crib and that he hadn't needed to be rocked after nursing for months, but she couldn't bring herself to move.  She stared at Harry, so peaceful and unaware, and the tears started in earnest.  And so she rocked him, tears falling on his precious face and cotton pyjamasas silently as she could.  Today the war had struck too close to home again and she needed to have her baby close so she could protect him.

 

 

Just in case.


End file.
